25th January 2014. The Pie To End All Pies

As a child the highlight of my Saturday would be a quarter share of a freshly baked pork pie - bought from the local shop and more often than not still warm. Unfortunately the baker, Coopers of Rotherham, went into liquidation sometime in the mid-1980s, but my love for pork pie was born.

Sadly good pork pies are a rare thing these days. Supermarkets stock things that are labelled as 'Pork Pie' but they are vile mass produced mechanically recovered grey mush surrounded by an over thick lardy pastry, guaranteed to have you reaching for the Rennies.

Fortunately South Yorkshire is blessed with several excellent purveyors of pork pie, among them  are; Elmhurst of Goldthorpe, Percy Turner of Jump and Waterall Bros in Sheffield Market. There may be others but these are my personal favourites.

I discovered Waterall Bros' several years back. One of my colleagues would occasionally take pity on me and on return from her weekly market trip present me with a small (ish) pork pie and a piece of black pudding. It was love at first bite - the light crisp golden pastry surrounding the delicious pink (proper) meaty filling with just the right amount of jelly to seperate them. A pie so good that any accompanying condiment would be deemed sacrilegious - even Henderson's! Followed by the most delicious black pudding it was a true northern delicacy, even if it was a little calorific.

Shortly before Christmas, via Twitter, I suggested to Steven Waterall (pork products supremo) that he could create a combination of his pork pie and black pudding. This wasn't exactly a eureka moment as I had tasted a similar creation from Elmhurst of Goldthorpe some years back.  To my delight a few days ago Steven 'tweeted' that his prototype pork and black pudding pie would be available for sampling this weekend. Steven kindly reserved me a 'review pie' and here it is in all it's delicious glory.

On the outside there's nothing to tell it apart from it's pork only sibling. But, once under the knife it becomes obvious. Rather than mix the two ingredients together (which I had expected) he has opted to lay about a half-inch of black pudding on top of the pork.  The real test is of course in the eating. First bite in and I was in pie heaven (and already regretting sharing it between the three of us) this was, to quote once funny comedian Peter Kay "a taste sensation" the pork complementing the pudding and vice versa. It was better than I could have imagined, no pie in my forty odd years of consuming savoury pastries has attacked my sensory organs in quite the same way, pure pie alchemy. Seeing the empty plate, now in front of me, left me feeling just as sad as the last day of the school holiday. Unanimous verdict in our pie loving household was that this simply was the best pie that any of us have ever eaten. One hour on and I'm still drooling - hopefully these will feature regularly on top of the Waterall Bros' counter.

Waterall's can be found in the new Sheffield Market situated at the bottom of The Moor - just look for the stall with the longest queue.